Besides being a successful author, blogger, and teacher, Tara carves out some time to support other writers such as myself. She has, over the past few weeks, featured my fiction on her very clever Fiction, Five, Friday!
http://taraford.weebly.com/fiction-five-friday
We are of like minds…’pay it forward’. Thanks, Tara 
Dear Trisha,
Congratulations, this is to let you know that your poem The Ash Can is one of the poems being featured on the PoetrySoup home page this week. Poems are rotated each day in groups of 14-16 to give each poem an equal opportunity to be displayed.
Thanks again and congratulations.
Sincerely,
PoetrySoup.com
The Ash Can © Trisha Sugarek
I got the call on Sunday night. I was traveling on business. When I looked at the caller ID
I wondered why my husband’s boss would be calling me. I was unprepared for what
he told me and my legs turned to water when he said that my husband was dead.
‘A heart attack? An accident?’ I asked. ‘No’, he said, ‘John committed suicide.
They found him in your garage this morning.’ I heard someone screaming and
wished that they would stop so I could hear the rest. His voice was very far away
and the woman just kept screaming. ‘Shut up! Shut up!’ I need to hear. I clapped my
hand over my mouth when I suddenly realized it was me who was screaming.
I don’t remember hanging up or getting on the plane. Yes, John and I were having
problems and we had been separated for about three months but nothing was official.
After thirty years of marriage I never believed that we couldn’t weather this and share
the rest of our lives together. Continue reading “This Author featured on Poetrysoup.com”
To promote not only Susan Elia Macneal’s new book but also my Blog, the folks at Random House have invited me to do a BOOK GIVE-AWAY! Easy to enter but remember it is for a signed, paperback of ‘The Prime Minister’s Secret Agent’ only and you must have a US mailing address.
Like my page (writeratplay) on Facebook, like Susan’s page https://www.facebook.com/susaneliamacneal?fref=ts, and follow us on Twitter. Return to the post and comment on my page, ‘Book Give-away – Done’. WINNERS will be announced later this week! Hurry to enter!!!
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DON’T MISS UPCOMING BLOGS featuring INTERVIEWS with best-selling AUTHORS!
In addition to my twice weekly blog I also feature an interview with another author once a month. So come along with me; we shall sneak into these writers’ special places, be a fly on the wall and watch them create! Dean Koontz 
was interviewed by me June 28th and July 1 in a two part sensational visit with this suspense-thriller mega-star.
To receive my posts sign up for my 
On the home page, enter your email address. Thanks!
Actor, director, playwright, author, Trisha Sugarek has created 305 pages of ‘How To’, Tips, Quotes, and 275 blank, lined pages for your writing. ‘I have created this journal for writers of all genres. Taken from my personal experience in the writing process, I hope it kick starts new writers to begin and more experience writers to continue.’
~~This spirited journal is designed to help writers open their hearts and minds. Much more than a journal for your creative writing, this handbook provides the writer with the ‘how to’s’ of writing. Tips, instructions and prompts to help you to hone your writing skill. Each blank, lined page has writing tips and quotes from other famous authors.~~
Available at www.amazon.com
A writer is only a writer when he or she is writing. Thinking isn’t writing, research isn’t writing, doing anything other than writing isn’t writing. 
Never one to break with tradition…..there’s a side story with regard to my enthusiasm for Susan Macneal’s writing.
The first of the Maggie Hope spy mysteries, Mr. Churchill’s Secretary, (which I highly recommend) is fiction but based in fact. The author was fortunate enough to have had several interviews with Churchill’s private secretary before her death. The book is about a ‘typist’ who was relegated to a menial job because of her gender. She was actually educated in mathematics and cryptology and could easily have fitted in with MI-Five (British CIA) but for her being a woman.
I was so taken by Winston Churchill’s pets having the run of the war offices….and how Susan wove this little fact (with many others) into her story so deftly. At the time I was looking for lighter material to round out my collection
of short plays for the classroom. An idea came to me of Mr. Churchill noodling away in front of his easel and Nelson, his cat talking to the audience; telling them something about the times that they lived in, an anecdote or two about the Prime Minister and of course, listening patiently to Mr. Churchill’s comments about the world at large.
July 1st, the fourth and newest book in the Maggie Hope series will go on sale.
Continue reading “MacNeal’s release of new book Sparks Give-away!”
There’s a very clever blog out there offered by author, Tara Ford of the UK. To help support her fellow-authors, she has developed Fiction Five Fridays.
The page features excerpts from various author’s books. The rules are simple – 5 sentences from a page with the digit 5 in the number. Short and sweet and readers get a little taste of what their favorite (or a new one) author is writing.
TODAY! I have been chosen by Tara with my 5,5,5 contribution (fifth day of the week, a five in the page no. and a five sentence excerpt from one of my novels). WHAT FUN!!
http://taraford.weebly.com/fiction-five-friday
This has been a very busy month here at my Writer’s Blog. Tomorrow begins my Interview with author, Dean Koontz. Then announcing a free book give-away of Susan Elia Macneal’s new release, The Prime Minister’s Secret Agent, and of course more storytelling by yours truly. Hope you’ll come back often to visit and enjoy my blog!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
DON’T MISS UPCOMING BLOGS featuring INTERVIEWS with best-selling AUTHORS!
In addition to my twice weekly blog I also feature an interview with another author once a month. So come along with me; we shall sneak into these writers’ special places, be a fly on the wall and watch them create! Dean Koontz will be interviewed by me June 28th in a two part sensational visit with this suspense-thriller mega-star.
To receive my posts sign up for my On the home page, enter your email address. Thanks!
Hi Everyone! This is a wonderful traveling Blog every Monday where authors answer four questions and then
pass it off to other authors to share their views on the writing process.
I want to thank Katie Beitz, a teacher from Australia and author of ‘The Shadow Miner’ http://katiebeitz.weebly.com/ for inviting me to participate!
Q. What am I working on?
I have several projects going at the time of this writing. I’m finishing up with the graphic designer on my newest effort: “The Creative Writer’s Journal and Handbook” and it will be released soon. With all my work, I revise, rewrite, edit and then rewrite more.
I’m also about half finished with Book 5 in The World of Murder series. “The Taste of Murder” takes place in the Food Network world of television and cooking shows. Detectives O’Roarke and Garcia have a cold case dumped on their desk. Despite their objections that they ‘don’t do cold cases’ their Commander tells them that they do now since the new Mayor has specifically asked for them. Three years earlier a relative of the mayor’s was murdered and the case was never solved.
On the back burner is my historic novel, “Song of the Yukon” which has been side-tracked by the murder mystery series. Continue reading “Blog Hop! The Writer’s Process”
I am in the middle of creating a Journal – Workbook for Creative Writing. There are six sections, ‘How to Begin’, ‘How to Write Fiction’, How to Write a Stage Play’ and more. I also included inspiring quotes from famous authors and playwrights as well as poets. It’s more than a journal, although the owner of the book will have well over 260 blank pages in which to create and write.
While I do not profess to be the ‘expert’ when it comes to writing I did want to share with you, in this Journal, some tools that you can use when you sit down to write. I don’t know about you, but I am so inspired when reading the work of another author that I admire, that I also included many fascinating quotes.
“I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.” Ernest Hemingway Continue reading “Kurt Vonnegut had a Few Rules….”
I was asked to review a short story, ‘Blood Day’ by Sarah Butland, a new friend on Facebook.
REVIEW: The hook at the beginning of this short story is effective. I wanted to stay and see where this was leading and it began to draw me in very quickly. The story is disturbing but very well written. Is our heroine in a state of a psychotic break or a genius trying to find herself and fit herself into a mundane and terrifying world?
‘Writer’s often say their characters are not a part of themselves but are themselves and that writing is
simply thinking on paper. Then I wonder why I didn’t think at all when I wrote as much as I did.’
Sarah is a talented writer and it is my hope that she develops this into something more.~~ Trisha Sugarek, WriteratPlay.com
Penny and Leonard sittin’ in a tree….k.i.s.s.i.n.g.
Half in fun, half serious Penny and Leonard have been proposing to each other, always confident that they would turn each other down. Within the brilliant writing of Chuck Lorre’s writing team, Leonard and Penny are arguing. Viewers squirm at how awkward the scene is, (again, the brilliance of Lorre’s writing) and then there is one last proposal and Leonard tells Penny ‘Yes! I’ll be your bran-muffin.’
Then in a pure moment of geek love, Leonard gets down on one knee in front of Penny, opens his wallet and digs around until he finds the ring he’s been carrying around ‘for a while’ (two years). He purposes very formally and Penny says ‘yes’. Leading up to this momentous event the episode was a delightful collection of vignettes of each couple and their strange and wonderful love for each other. Sheldon’s description of his written relationship agreement with Amy, and Continue reading “Leonard Said, ‘Yes!’ The Big Bang Theory!”
